Бретт Холлидей - Count Backwards to Zero

“Seventeen pounds of plutonium.”

“Seventeen pounds,” the man repeated.

“With a force of — what was it — twenty-five kilotons. Very dirty — I think that was the way he put it. And he said something about a three-switch triggering device. Do you go to conferences? Would you recognize the name Quentin Little?”

“Of Camberwell, of course.” He took off his glasses and polished them carefully. “And he wasn’t the strangest of the English, by any means. Not that all of the Americans are altogether normal. Droll sense of humor, Little.”

“Sense of humor!” Crowley cried. “We’re talking about an atomic alert, and that ain’t funny! Let’s get cracking. The man said one hour.”

“From the time he picks up the money,” Shayne said. “And he knows you won’t lay out two hundred grand unless I can persuade you there really is a bomb. We can take a couple of minutes to talk to the girl. Crowley, I think you’d better sit in on this. You too, Will.”

At the door Shayne stopped the FBI man and said quietly, “We’re going to do this my way, Crowley. Low key. She’s jumpy.”

Crowley shrugged angrily and followed him to the next room. Gentry told the matron to leave them alone. Shayne sat down across from Cecily, who was playing with a pack of cigarettes.

“Hello, Cecily. That didn’t work out too well, did it?”

“Hi, Mr. Shayne. Thanks to you, it didn’t work out too well.” She gestured around the bleak room. “The land of the free.”

“What’s the boy’s name?”

“Jack Lightfoot.”

“Did Dessau untie him?”

“That bastard Dessau was thinking of nobody but himself.” She jumped the cigarettes over a book of matches. “Jack cut himself loose on a can or something. He was bleeding, and he didn’t untie me, you’ll notice.”

“He’s got everybody on edge. He says he hid the bomb somewhere on the Queen, and he’ll set it off unless we pay him two hundred thousand dollars.”

That surprised her. She looked around at the others. Shayne told her who they were, and he repeated the message Jack Lightfoot had given the mayor.

“He’s got money on the brain,” she said.

“How well do you know him, Cecily?”

“Old Jack? Too well.”

“Do you think he’ll do it if we don’t pay him?”

She sniffed nervously and shook out a cigarette. “I guess so. How much is that in English money?”

Shayne told her. She lit her cigarette.

“Which wouldn’t go too far the way prices are today, would it?”

“Did you collect anything from Dessau?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Say, what did you do, Mr. Shayne, follow us from the motel?”

“Right behind you, all the way. I didn’t see any money passed. I don’t think you ended up with a cent.”

“Too true, too true.” She looked at the other faces again and sat up straighter. “Mr. Shayne, I’d better give you my side of it, I guess. When Dessau called me up — and that’s another rat, incidentally, a real rat — and told me my Dad had smuggled in an atom bomb, I nearly swallowed my tongue. I was so surprised. It just isn’t Dad’s style.” Her face clouded. “I mean wasn’t, don’t I?”

“Who told you he was dead?”

“Pierre. He said you stabbed him in a fight, but why would you do that?”

“So you didn’t know a bomb was involved until today?”

“I certainly did not. I wouldn’t have let Dad do it. And then that Jack. I don’t know all the ins and outs, but he got his hands on it, somehow, took it out of Dad’s Bentley,”

She checked the effect of her story on the three men around her, but they had all listened to too many stories. Their faces were equally cold, equally impassive.

She continued, “And Dessau wanted to know what I thought we should do about it. I told him, and I told Jack the same, that the first thing to do was get it off the ship, and then either turn it in or bury it. And the solution we came up with, finally, was to put it in the garbage and let it get burned. I know you can’t burn plutonium, but whatever was left would be dumped at sea.”

“You didn’t think of selling it?” Shayne said.

Her eyes were wide. “You can’t put an advert in the paper — ‘One used atom bomb, good condition, best offer accepted’ — can you? And I wouldn’t, anyway. Dessau did suggest it, and I told him flatly, ‘What do you think I am, Pierre, a reactionary?’”

“Where does Jack stand politically, does he agree with you?”

“Even more so! He’s against everything! On top of that, he has about as much loyalty as a stick of wood.”

There was a light knock on the door and Dr. Manship stepped in. “You wanted to know what was inside that gas tank.”

“Yeah,” Shayne said.

“The lid has been cut off twice. The second time it was stuck on with a few spot welds. It won’t hold gasoline. There are two inches of lead sheathing inside, but that’s all.”

“The rat,” Cecily said. “Typical.”

“Meaning that that definitely is an atom bomb on the Queen Elizabeth,” Crowley snapped. “So what are we waiting for?”

“What’s the effective range of a bomb that size?” Shayne asked.

“A quarter of a mile, perhaps, if it’s exploded on deck. In the interior of the ship, much less.”

“Can I ask a question?” Cecily said, half rising. “I didn’t pay any attention. How far away are we from there?”

“About an eighth of a mile,” Shayne said. The distance was actually a mile and a half, but he was counting on her unfamiliarity with Miami. “Don’t get excited. We haven’t paid him the money yet.”

“Yes, but listen—”

Crowley made a decisive movement. “Shayne, there’s something wrong with your sense of priorities. An hour doesn’t give us much time to evacuate everybody inside a quarter-mile radius. We’ll need every available man and vehicle. Gentry! I want you to make the radio announcement. Calmness. Firmness. Our real enemy here is panic.”

Gentry was watching Shayne. “What do you think, Mike?”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Shayne said carelessly. “But Cecily and I are going to stay here and talk.”

“Let’s go a quarter of a mile away and talk,” she said. One of Gentry’s division chiefs appeared in the doorway. “There’s another call coming in to the mayor, Chief. We’ve got it on the amplifier.”

Gentry and Crowley went to the other office to listen, leaving the door open.

Cecily said in a scared voice, “What do you want to talk about?”

“What it was like at home. Your father gave me one version, but I don’t know how much of it to believe.”

“What difference does it make?”

In the other room, an amplified voice said, “For the sake of your pretty little city, Mr. Mayor, I hope you have the money ready.”

A voice answered, “It’s almost all counted. Give us another five minutes.”

“Five more minutes, okey-do. I’ll start timing it now. Check. While we’re waiting, I’ll tell you the way this is going to be. I promised I’d do that.”

“I’m listening.”

“Pass it on to the interested parties. The bomb has been booby-trapped. One small misstep, and boom. But not to worry. I have a gun. I’ll repeat that. I have a gun. If anybody at all approaches me while I’m picking up the money I will shoot myself between the eyes. I hope that’s clear. I’m not too enchanted with this world. It will be the easiest thing I’ve done in weeks.”

“That’s clear.”

“And after I blow out what we laughingly call my brains, you will have to fumble around the ship searching for the bomb, hoping you can make it harmless before it goes off. On the other hand, if you act intelligently, if no one takes a shot at me or follows my car, I will place that telephone call in exactly one hour, and tell you how to proceed. Two hundred thousand is cheap! The ship alone is worth fifty times that. The Cunard Line will reimburse you. Shall I go over any of this again, or do you have it?”